Islamic fundamentalists have exploited each and every one of these opportunities. Even the Egyptian democracy ended up being ruled by Islamists.

Only Tunisia has managed to get a non-radical Islamist government (the leading party calls itself "moderate Islamist," I assume that simply means social conservatism). No surprise that they were the originators of the Arab Spring protest and likely the only one not corrupted by outside/nonpopular forces.

I don't know enough about the FSA, though I wouldn't be surprised if it were more of the same US backed Islamic fundamentalsts or anti-American Islamic fundamentalists.

Chariot of Fire wrote:As for GreecePwns.....yeah, what? A massive debt. Get a job you slacker.

Viceroy wrote:[The Biblical creation story] was written in a time when there was no way to confirm this fact and is in fact a statement of the facts.

If Syria is an overbearing dictatorship, how on Earth could opposition parties hold a two-day conference in a nice hotel in the capital city to discuss relieving Assad from power? In the western narrative, cartoonish squads of secret police and troops should have descended on that place. (The "Free Syrian Army" terrorists boycotted the meeting, BTW.)

The western narrative (there is only evil dictator Assad and the armed FSA opposing him!) has holes.

20 years from now, Chinese and Russian influence (and I guess Indian) has significantly increased on the geopolitical scale.

So, instead of hosting mere discussion forums, they may actually start intervening--in similar ways to US/NATO interventions, mass bombing campaigns, outright invasions (less likely), etc. We'll be living in a world where others than the US become more influential in smaller countries' sovereignty.

With the production of natural gas rapdily increasing, US imports on petroleum would decrease significantly, thus freeing up more petroleum for other countries. With a lesser demand for foreign oil, would other countries (China, India) engage in similar means to previous/ongoing US foreign policy in securing petroleum from Middle Eastern nations?

Yup. You were mentioned in that post. It was a personal attack on you. Sure.

Also, why the sudden inclusion of Hussein every time you mention his name and Arab conflicts lately? Is this an attempt to tie the President to Islamic fundamentalism? Well, you've already tied him to Marxism, so doing the same with Islamic fundamentalism would be contradictory.

As if you know what either of those terms mean. <--- that's not an ad hominem, since you've displayed on this forum in the past that you truly don't know the meaning of either term.

Chariot of Fire wrote:As for GreecePwns.....yeah, what? A massive debt. Get a job you slacker.

Viceroy wrote:[The Biblical creation story] was written in a time when there was no way to confirm this fact and is in fact a statement of the facts.

so 1 year of Libya liberation, and democratization.how things going in this country after US bring all good things, and when people are finally free, are become more prosperous and wealthy ? Or things become much more worst and country become totally poor and unsecured ?

qwert wrote:so 1 year of Libya liberation, and democratization.how things going in this country after US bring all good things, and when people are finally free, are become more prosperous and wealthy ? Or things become much more worst and country become totally poor and unsecured ?

Actually, as far as monthly deaths are concerned, the situation in Libya seems more stable than Iraq and Afghanistan---which were being occupied by a huge military force.

This may be yet another example of the failures of central planning--even in the most basic function: security. For Afghanistan and Iraq, imposed order seems to largely be inducing the violence as oppose to mitigating it.

The extent of the damage brought to mind the words of a United States Army officer who told the Associated Press correspondent Peter Arnett, as they surveyed the ruined Vietnamese city of Ben Tre, pulverized by American bombardment in 1968: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

Syrian government forces patrolled the Khalidiya neighborhood of Homs on Sunday.

What an Agence France-Presse journalist found in the Homs neighborhood of Khalidiya on Tuesday.

An image provided to news organizations by a Syrian opposition news agency, said to show the ruined Khalidiya neighborhood of Homs on Friday, as government forces regained control.

A soldier loyal to President Bashar al-Assad outside the Khalid bin al-Waleed mosque in Homs on Monday.

Ruins around the historic Khalid bin al-Waleed mosque in Homs on Monday.

its make sense,, its same when US drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bout towns are whip out and US won.So i can not see why this could be horrific and when US annihilate entire towns population are ok.If US use tactic of total annihilation,, so why can Syrian Legal Government troops can not use same tactic to bring Order again?

Qwert wrote:its make sense,, its same when US drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, bout towns are whip out and US won.So i can not see why this could be horrific and when US annihilate entire towns population are ok.If US use tactic of total annihilation,, so why can Syrian Legal Government troops can not use same tactic to bring Order again?

No, it isn't the same at all. The bombs dropped on Japan, the German's conquering Europe and the bombing of London and other events of World War II are a totally different situation. The physical destruction of cities in Syria is the direct result of a heavy handed government shelling and bombing it's own citizens.

The extent of the damage brought to mind the words of a United States Army officer who told the Associated Press correspondent Peter Arnett, as they surveyed the ruined Vietnamese city of Ben Tre, pulverized by American bombardment in 1968: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”

Syrian government forces patrolled the Khalidiya neighborhood of Homs on Sunday.

What an Agence France-Presse journalist found in the Homs neighborhood of Khalidiya on Tuesday.

An image provided to news organizations by a Syrian opposition news agency, said to show the ruined Khalidiya neighborhood of Homs on Friday, as government forces regained control.

A soldier loyal to President Bashar al-Assad outside the Khalid bin al-Waleed mosque in Homs on Monday.

Ruins around the historic Khalid bin al-Waleed mosque in Homs on Monday.

--Andy

Oh, Andy, but you're looking at the glass half empty, my friend! With such destruction, we'd need CONSTRUCTION. This will boost GDP, and then Syria will be banging!!!

Never mind about using resources to rebuild formerly functional buildings. Don't be so glum, chum! With war, comes great economic prosperity!